


we are only just glitter on the floor, baby

by paintmelilacs



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Clubs, Angst, Club Promoters, Drinking, Gen, Hangover, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Party, Professional party goers, a concept i couldnt get out of my head, a series perhaps?, come on just read me yknow u want to 😏😏, i try to be poetic, it comes off as depressing, oohmygod i literally dont fucking know how to be wholesome what the fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25545133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintmelilacs/pseuds/paintmelilacs
Summary: That’s all they are at the end of the day, she supposes. Just glitter on the floor.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Piper McLean & Leo Valdez
Kudos: 15





	we are only just glitter on the floor, baby

**Author's Note:**

> a concept i have, enjoy club promoter piper and leo !
> 
> this maybe become a collection of connected oneshots :) (w/more characters to be featured)

Glitter.

Tedious, bits of obliterated shiny plastic that, one day, will indefinetly inhabit the ocean floor. It does not have a practical use. 

It is awfully pretty, though. (And sometimes that’s all they care about here.)

It only really hits you in that shining light. Where the music is a numb buzz on Piper’s lips, the lyrics bouncing off her head, the bass pushes into her ears, and then... _the flashing lights go all blurry-like, and when Piper looks up—_

It’s raining.

Raining diamonds. Rubies. Shards of sparkling amethyst. Fall does precious gemstones, cascading down from the catwalks in the dark sweaty skies, glimmering in the lights, a rush of gold. 

The girl closes her eyes, letting the gems caress her tan  face. 

Time slows down. Ebbs does the cascade, in and out like how the moon pulls the tides and how Piper’s body sways in the crowd, following the whim of her breaths. She is falling. Eyes closed, lips parted.

Everything is quiet. 

_ (at last)  _

Then, the glitter hits the ground. Time restarts itself, the bass drills into her ears again.

And...that’s all they are at the end of the day, Piper supposes. Just....glitter on the floor.

...

..

Piper doesn’t mind it.

She wakes slowly. 

Her eyes lift just barely, then back down again. Then she blinks, and blinks some more. The floor beneath is her cold, biting into her thighs whenever she shifts position. Comparatively, it’s a nice thing to wake up to.

Her head, however, pounds. 

Leftover bass wracks her head like a famous west coast earthquake, assaulting her frontal lobes in a way that lets her know _she had too much to drink last night._

It’s nothing Piper can’t handle. Just another small regret to add to her, frankly mountainous, pile. 

The club around is her in a similar state.

The place is mostly clear of bodies, but a few handfuls of stragglers linger, sprawled out across booths and halfway-fallen off chairs, and in one instance, passed out on top a table, bottle of Remmy’s still clutched fervently in hand. They look peaceful.

Glow sticks liter the floor like fresh rainfall, or the money on a stripper’s stage. Their dying lights mocked her, seeing as she’s the one who has to clean them up fairly shortly. _Pesky bastards._

And to finish it off—the whole place stinks of alcohol—she wagered it’d light if you dropped a match. 

....But, at least it’s quiet. 

Still passed out, Leo is slumped beside her on the wall, holding a bright pink plastic baseball bat, and his ID lanyard on backwards around his neck. She watches the gentle in and out of his breathing, humming a little song to it. The only time Leo ever really looks peaceful is when he’s passed out like this.

Patches of dark indigo and bright magenta glitter shine on his eyes and under his cheeks. It had gotten a bit misplaced during the night, and now it looked like he cried gemstones. 

Piper reached up and touched her cheek, feeling the small bits of plastic on her own skin, knowing that she probably looked the same, if not worse. 

The party got a little out of hand last night. Evidently. 

It was a total rager, and a sit in, so once everyone was in the door, Piper and Leo were free to party until their hearts content. 

_ (Or, until their wallets content) _

This particular night club owner always wants his parties to be the talk of the city, and was familiar with Piper and Leo’s....assets. 

It wasn’t meant to get this out of hand—on their own parts, of course. The party, on the other hand, was supposed to be so off the chain that the owner set aside a pot of money _just_ for the numerous expected block complaints. 

The problem was, normally, Piper wasn’t supposed to drink at these events. Get the party started, rile up the guests, sure. But she wasn’t supposed to get so fucked up herself. That’s not what she’s payed to do.

Piper sighs and wipes the lipstick off her face with the inside of her shirt. It stains the fabric berry purple.

At least she’s not as guilty as her partner—of which she had to drag away after he did a small snuff of blow off some girl’s tits. Leo had called it the _“skier’s valley”_ , if she remembered. 

It’s okay though. Just means that the clean up will be a little more painful.

Leo mumbles something in his sleep next to her, and his eyes scrunch up. Piper brushes the curls back from his face.

Words never have explained their relationship well.

Leo is certainly not someone easy to be close to, and expecting him to be reliable was always a bad plan, _and_ Piper _knows_ sometimes she meddles _just_ _a bit too much_ in other people’s lives. 

But, Piper also knows that where Leo goes she’ll follow, and vice versa. They’ve been pinkie-tied ever since middle school. (She just wishes, on a star here and there, that he wasn’t so self destructive)

And sometimes, she questions why they do it all. 

They were only ever going to end up like this; pretty broken dolls, only used, never treasured. Wrecking themselves on the weekends and picking up the pieces just do it all over again the next. 

It’s not like this is what she imagined she’d be doing five years ago. Piper always was a rebel—from birth and till death she will be. 

But she’d always thought she would do something _important_. Like, designing rockets for NASA, or solving the energy-crisis, or scaling the mountains in France. She had armfuls of passion, with nowhere to put it. 

Leo was different. He lived life in a dream. There were stars in his eyes that blocked out reality, his mind constantly stuck in a childish attitude that everyone told him to would get him nowhere. They weren’t exactly wrong.

Nothing really matters to him, which is something that never changed. Sometimes that worries Piper. Like she’ll wake up one morning to see him teetering on the edge of the balcony, letting the wind decide fate for him.

In the end, he just wanted to have fun. So when he was seventeen he took up some sketchy job at a teen’s club, and, well, Piper did say she’d follow him wherever.

So instead of following some big destiny, Piper crumpled up her life like a piece of trash and threw it away into the industry of parties. _Parties_.

She hates that she likes it. 

(Cause fuck, it’s almost like she can live in her own little fantasy world, with Leo and loud music and their downtown apartment and his dopey smiles and her 90’s rock n’ roll tops—)

Piper leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes, relishing the silence.

She lives for moments like these. 

Moments where, for once, Piper feels like she’s the only one awake in the whole world. And she’s _special_. 

She’s not either of those things.

And when the first seemingly dead party-goer wakes up and peels the spit-plastered hair off her face, walking shakily to the door, Piper knew it was time to get up.

She shook Leo awake beside her, watching his eyes go through the motions of confusion, grogginess, and finally, recognition of why they were wasted on a club floor. 

He mumbles something to her and pulls himself up using the wall, stumbling outside the back door. He was probably out for a smoke. Or, uglier things Piper doesn’t like to think about. 

Piper rubs the sleep out of her eyes, pausing to look at the glitter stuck to her palms after she pulls away. Huh. She tries to pick it off. It stays, stubborn as glue. 

Pulling her sorry ass off the floor, Piper starts sweeping the glitter off the ground.


End file.
